“And to think… I hesitated.”

[elfs]

I’ve always been a little leery of studies that show that somehow, a bigger monitor equals more productivity.  Well, count me as no longer leery.  I’ve been hacking on a 24″ monitor I bought at a Christmas sale yesterday, and already I’m going along significantly faster than I was before.  For one thing, I can now have both Firebug and the screen I’m interested in visible at the same time.  That alone makes me twice as effective as before.  Being able to do both and have the source code editor visible at the same time?  Priceless.

Seriously.  If you code at home and your monitor is still 19″, do yourself a favor and go buy a bigger one.  Or, as a cheap alternative, if your card supports it, buy a second monitor and dual-head.  Whatever you do, get the capacity to have all your work visible: output, product, debugging information in one glance.

(Yes, I know, the title is tragically bad SEO, but I couldn’t hold back from a Hellraiser quote.)

This entry was automatically cross-posted from Elf's technical journal, ElfSternberg.com

Comments

[http://users.livejournal.com/_candide_/]

About a year ago, I bought a larger monitor, widescreen, in fact.

I did that because I need the same vertical resolution spread out over a larger surface area, due to my poor, old eyes. ^_^

[shunra.livejournal.com]

About a year ago my son sneaked into my office and installed a second monitor, against my wishes, while my husband distracted me by some cheap device involving coffee and pastry.

I think it had to do with a big project.

They were right, I was wrong. My left monitor is 19", the right is 20" wide-screen. My productivity is much higher.

I think I may have forgiven them the subterfuge, by now.

[whipartist.livejournal.com]

Stop! You're doing something that drives me crazy.

You're confusing physical monitor size with monitor resolution. A 24" monitor at 800x600 isn't going to be better than a 20" monitor at 1600x1200. It's all about the pixels, not the square inches.

This is coming from someone who is typing on a 15" laptop screen right now, with a resolution of 1920x1200. It's physically small, but packs a shit-ton of data into a small area.

[(Anonymous)]

The correlation may be imperfect, but it is there -- particularly among people who would need a microscope to read anything on a 15" screen running at 1920x1200. :)

Number 127

[elfs.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I know. I'm pretty sure the monitor I had at Isilon was in the 2400 pixel-wide range. But my eyes can't see crap if I put my 15" laptop monitor into 1920x1080 mode, whereas I can see everything now on this monitor here, and sit comfortably far enough back to have my feet on the floor and my back straight.

[whipartist.livejournal.com]

I work with side-by-side 1600x1200 20" monitors, both at home and at work.

Shortly after I joined the company, some IT guy just capriciously replaced my monitor (I had one at the time) with a 22" monitor at lower resolution. He couldn't understand why I was upset. A physically bigger screen just had to be better, right?

The other place this drives me crazy is in shopping for laptops. Manufacturers prominently list the physical size of the display, but either don't give the resolution of the screen, or bury it way down in spec details. It makes it really hard to comparison shop.

No substitute for proper-sized pixels -- and a lot of them.

[(Anonymous)]

I used to have the 2x20" setup on my desk as well. Then, about three years ago, I purchased (at about $1300) a Dell 30" monster.

Oh. My. Holy... yeah, wow. I think, subjectively, it's about the same physical size as my two 20s, and it throws an extra 160 pixels in there for width -- 2560x1600. It requires a card with a dual-link DVI output to drive it and ONLY has DVI inputs, so be aware of that.

• 1080p video is a window at 100% size. (The Tron Legacy trailer was particularly delicious.)
  
• A browser window with a lot of tabs -- or many windows -- easy.
  
• On the other hand you may suffer information overload without initially realizing why.

These monster monitors, the 2560-pixel-wide ones, (30" from Apple/Dell/HP/others, 27" iMac @ 2560x1440) are going to redefine information density in glorious ways. IBM had a nice offering with their T221, but that thing really needed another 20" diagonal, 3840x2400 at 22" was worse than 1920x1200 at 15"!

(Okay, I looked it up. 30" running at 2560x1600 = 101 pixels / inch, 24" @ 1920x1200 = 94 PPI, 15.4" @ 1920x1200 = 147 PPI, IBM T221 (22" @ 3840x2400) = 204 PPI or a display where you need a Brazil-style Fresnel lens in front of it!)

I know it's a bloody huge expense. It. Is. Worth. It. Especially with the number of hours you spend in front of a computer! Enjoy your 24", it'll make your life a lot easier; then you'll decide to add another, then another... do that enough and your office will resemble something seen on the covers of bad sci-fi books.

Bryan.

[abostick59.livejournal.com]

Really? How many tables?

[urox.livejournal.com]

Glad to see that you've seen the light. ;)

[funos.livejournal.com]

Agreed, though I find one huge monitor better than two side-by-side. It doesn't force a non-middle layout of windows.

[xengar.livejournal.com]

Check Whipartist's complaint above, as long as the monitors are big enough for your eyes to comfortably handle their maximum resolution two monitors is the cheapest way to get twice the pixels. Of course, the real solution is two get two SLI/Crossfire video cards with two monitors connected to each... ;)

[areitu.livejournal.com]

A friend of mine gave me a tour of the Google campus and of his work area a few months ago. When I pointed out the monstrously large high-res HP monitors at every workstation, he said it was one of the easiest and cheapest ways for a company to get additional productivity out of programmers and/or engineers. I also work much faster on my dual monitors at work than on my single screen at home...I'm not sure how my single-screen coworkers get away without the additional viewing area.

[kengr]

some of us have known that for 20 years. Back when the various Borland compilers allowed you to have the program executing on the CGA/EGA/VGA monitor and the debugger running on the mono/Hercules monitor. Or vice-versa.

[kengr]

And someone I know, a bit south of you has *5* 21" monitors on his desktop And yes, he had to build a custom desk.

He uses that system to do a bunch of things, including run his ISP.

Multiple Moniters

[(Anonymous)]

I use 2 monitors, but I lust after:

http://www.digitaltigers.com/zenview.asp

[mundens.livejournal.com]

I remember that! :)

[ben-raccoon.livejournal.com]

I don't even program, and I've discovered the joy of multiple large monitors. The more real estate the better, when you tend to have a lot of things going on at once.

[mundens.livejournal.com]

I've been working for over a year with a wide-screen 24" with a 19" in portrait-mode sitting to the right of it.

This means I can put the application on one entire monitor and the IDE on the other, or I can put the IDE on one and reference documentation in full screen, larger than A4, on the other, etc.

I'm beginning to want a third 19" to the left, and the wide-screen 24" would be better as a pure 24", or maybe 37".... :)

[wookie-cd.livejournal.com]

The comments are flying thick and fast on this one :) I feel like I have to add my 2 cents' worth as well.

I've gone the two-screener approach, with one of them in portrait mode. Many of the webpages and PDFs I access regularly are much more usable in this format. I always open the mysql manual and the camel book in portrait mode, too.

I took a photo of my rig as soon as I read this post - that's Livejournal in that white box on the left. I have spent a lot of money on this rig, and I'm really satisfied with it.



That grey widget under the left monitor is a coffee-cup warmer - it does a good job too ;)